The United States is approaching a “Sputnik moment” when it comes to renewable energy, and Minnesota is one place that could help it meet that challenge, according to a top U.S. Department of Energy official.

DOE official emphasizes need to cut cost of solar energy

Arun Majumdar (left), an official in the U.S. Department of Energy, and U.S. Sen. Al Franken spoke at the Minnesota Renewable Energy Summit on Monday at Metropolitan State University in St. Paul. (Staff photo: Bill Klotz)

Another ‘Sputnik moment’ ahead?

The United States is approaching a “Sputnik moment” when it comes to renewable energy, and Minnesota is one place that could help it meet that challenge, according to a top U.S. Department of Energy official.

Comments from Arun Majumdar, head of the DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, highlighted the Minnesota Renewable Energy Summit held Monday at Metropolitan State University in St. Paul. Along with U.S. Sen. Al Franken, Majumdar talked about the need to create jobs, save energy and lower taxes in Minnesota and elsewhere by starting an initiative to retrofit public and private buildings to make them more energy-efficient.

Majumdar compared the current climate with the late 1950s, when the 1957 launch of the Sputnik satellite by the Soviet Union prompted the nation to begin in earnest to develop a world-class space program.

“This is our ‘Sputnik’ moment when it comes to energy,” Majumdar said. “But instead of a moon shot, we have to work toward a sun shot: getting the cost of producing solar energy down to 5 cents per kilowatt hour, so that it can be sold without subsidies.”

Majumdar said a “quantum leap” in renewable energy investment and research was needed to make the U.S. globally competitive in that area. He said the five main components in making that happen are innovation, manufacturing, private capital, markets and deployment.

“Right now, it’s too risky for the private sector (to invest heavily in renewable energy research),” he said. “I hope the model you’re creating in Minnesota is replicated throughout the country. The real innovation doesn’t happen in Washington — it happens in the states.”

Franken, a Democrat on the Senate Energy Committee, used the occasion to launch an initiative he called “Back to Work Minnesota,” aimed at meeting those goals as well as tapping Minnesota’s innovation resources to help the process along. According to Franken, retrofitting has been successful in areas such as Scott County, which made its government buildings more energy efficient, saving money and thus lowering county taxes.

The initiative, he said, would bring together public and private resources to help communities learn how to retrofit buildings in their own cities.

“We don’t have coal, oil or natural gas in Minnesota,” Franken said. “We do have renewable energy, though, and the level of innovation occurring all over the state is quite striking.”

Franken said that creating a statewide retrofitting initiative for public buildings would not only create jobs but would also pay for itself within five years in energy cost savings.

“It’s one of the few ways of creating jobs at virtually no expense to the government,” he said. “The financing model is easier for public buildings, but the building trades and energy product manufacturers would be behind it.”

Franken said the initiative would include businesses, financiers, state and local government officials, and state education leaders.

“The cheapest form of energy is the kind you don’t have to use,” Franken said.

He praised academic researchers at the University of Minnesota for such projects as finding alternate means for generating the rare earth metals used in magnets, the type of material ordinarily imported from China.

Franken was to meet privately Monday afternoon with representatives from the Minnesota League of Cities, the Association of Minnesota Counties, the Minnesota Energy Services Coalition, the Minnesota Energy Jobs Association, the Clinton Foundation, the Center for American Progress and the Carbon War Room.

He said that the economic impact of energy-efficiency initiatives is “huge” and that Minnesota could lead the way.

“We could be the state to figure out how to make that happen,” he said. “This is too big an opportunity to miss.”
Monday’s summit also included presentations by representatives from Great River Energy, Xcel Energy and St. Paul College.

3 comments

Solyndra of the North – same solar company in Mankato fails twice under 2 names with public financing BOTH times. Pipestone turbine blade manufacturor went belly up after public financing and 4 years of operation – now has almost a $1/2 million dollar fine from the MPCA for improper hazardous waste disposal. Lakefield wind just started operating and proved that, just like Bent Tree and Elm Creek II, the MN noise models for wind projects are a complete failure. Is Nobels Wind still burning up? I didn’t see and updates from Xcel since June when the “update” on their brand new wind project was “we have not yet ascertained the source of the problem” – 3 1/2 months after the problem became obvious. If we are attempting to fly Sputnik into a black hole, renewable energy is perfect.

Rural, what a great expression of “backward thinking” which would lead the U.S. into a “black hole” in regards to our energy future! Chinese public financing ($44 billion) of Chinese solar production and the indirectly related Solyndra failure underline the need for massive U.S. public dollar investment into our private sector’s quest to be highly competitive as the world progresses from fossil to renewable energy. That change is well underway whether you understand the need for renewable’s or not

Ewing, rural’s comment may not be what you wanted to hear but it is definitely not “backward thinking” and unlike your comment, does not appear to be based in ignorance. Our energy future is solid and will be based in oil and natural gas until well after you are dead – allowing you to live for up to 80 more years. There are massive oil deposits that were recently found in the Great Lakes Region in Africa, which is why the US continues to expand Africom. Libya was recently found to have more oil that was previously thought and has been described as “floating on oil.” The Bakken oil fields in North Dakota have more oil than Saudi Arabia. The technology to drill to the required depths has existed in Russia for decades so getting at it should not be a problem for us.

I am not opposed to Renewal Energy and application of clean energy programs. However, what Rural mentioned deals with wind turbines and those monstrosities are not only net-polluters, but widespread use will lead to ecological disaster if we continue to ignore the imbalance they cause with bird/bat deaths. This entire Green Energy initiative is political and appears to be nothing more than a means by which to shift money to fund the Global Governance initiative. There is no forward thinking agenda associated with this change; it’s about money, power and control. Read up on how Carbon Currency is supposedly going to work. That’s what this is about.